Melancholy IV - A Heartfelt Intellectual Beatdown

The following is a post I produced for r/anime during a rewatch of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  I want to take a minute to discuss what it means to me before reproducing what I wrote.

During this rewatch I really got this series of Haruhi (I refer to the character herself as Suzumiya).  In my previous essay I had come at the end to the faint conclusion that the girl and the series were one and the same, and that the series had a character that matched her own.  I was correct, but I did not realize how correct.  Haruhi really does have a personality and by manipulating us it makes us part of the show too.  The give and take between Suzumiya as a character, Haruhi as a show, Kyon as a character, us as the audience, and the rest of the S.O.S. Brigade as parts of Haruhi's personality who nonetheless are themselves people is one of the most brilliant, and audacious, things I have ever seen.  It is a symphony, a symphony of harmonizing instruments in which the episodes and arcs are movements in different anime genres and the conductor is a genius adolescent girl standing above it all who plays us best.

Melancholy IV (Episode 10 in Broadcast order) is when this realization finally burst on me.  Throughout the rewatch the thought had been building, but it came to a head here.  I had recognized that Melancholy III was a riff on dating sim adaptations, but having not watched many of those I didn't really know them.  The same was true of the Island arc: I could see the mystery references, but I have never been an avid reader of mystery novels nor one to watch/play modern Japanese mysteries.  I could have them explained to me, but like all jokes, to truly get it you have to be familiar enough to catch the meaning in the same instant it occurs.

Then Melancholy IV, the action episode, came along.  I grew up on early-2000s battle shōnen: Dragon Ball Z, Rurouni Kenshin, and Yu Yu Hakusho were all series I enjoyed, and I went on to be part of the generation that watched the Big Three of Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece (although I finished none of them).  Even if my tastes have changed and I've largely outgrown them, action shōnen are nonetheless the comfort food that I will always have a soft spot for and, more importantly, will recognize intimately.  

I suspect, then, that it was this combination of immersion in Haruhi for over a week by writing an essay a day on it, my sensitivity to the tropes of shōnen, and what is likely an exceptionally good episode, that brought me to write what I did below, trying to capture in a small reflection the unbelievable genius I'd just seen unfold, and now knew had been happening all along.

---

Episode 10 - “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled.”

You know that moment in a shōnen series where a villain says, “This isn’t even my final form”?  That’s just what happened when Haruhi decided to do an action-genre episode in its own idiom which left me sporadically cackling since yesterday morning.  I’m going to take a rather unorthodox approach as I just cannot think of a better way to convey the logic and structure of what happens when both the audience and the anime as a whole are characters, and the latter is royally pissed off.

Prelude: Under Amestris

Haruhi is getting tired of being misunderstood.  Sure it was gratifying at first to know she was smarter than her audience, purposefully expressing her message in an eccentric way that couldn’t help but put most people off.  Messing with people is half the fun, right?  There is a distinct sense of superiority in knowing that those watching don’t understand this is just an act and that she is actually a thoughtful, serious anime underneath.  However, she had hoped that eventually we would see through this outer layer, and tried dropping hints because what’s the point of saying something if nobody hears?

Now here we are, over halfway through the series, and still nobody gets it.  We missed the clues and kept fixating on things like whether we approved of the fanservice or the mysterious world building; those were supposed to bring people in to her club so they’d pay attention to what she had to say, not captivate them so they didn’t bother to look further.  But the worst part of all this is that people think they got her.  They think they figured this whole thing out just because they noticed a few references and felt clever when they connected them to other parts of the show.  They think they’re smarter than Haruhi, and if there’s one thing a Suzumiya always keeps, it’s her pride…

Ichigo Shinigami

We’re aware of what’s going on in this episode.  We see how Suzumiya is unable to confess to Kyon and so complains about it like a good tsundere.  Her reaction formation is so completely transparent it’s absurd.  Then look, that flash of the girl and boy out on the tennis court lets us know this is a romantic scene in case we didn’t get it.  Also our eyes are quick, we also caught that umbrella etched into the desk as Asakura went to kill Kyon.  Haruhi is so obvious with its signs and characterization that we have no trouble figuring it out.

At which point Asakura leans over to us and says, “Perhaps Suzumiya-san is feeling lovesick,” whispering it like some secret that wasn’t in fact broadcast to the world to see.  It’s okay, though, everybody needs a little help from a psychopath to get through the first Hunter Exam.

Second Chakra Gate Open

Okay, so maybe that was a little obvious now that we think about it, but we were also able to get the references.  The way Kyon talks about Saturday we are able to immediately situate ourselves in time right after Melancholy III despite several episodes passing (or, you know, the title of the episode).  Also we’re rewatchers and LN readers, and we know that Suzumiya complaining about it being too hot is a call forward to Melancholy VI where she’s sitting in the same chair, framed in the same way, but in her gym outfit.  This silly scrambling of the order is no match for our ability to put it together in the right way.

But wait, that’s not all.  When watching the fight we see how this is making fun of the action tropes.  You know, the villain who has to explain herself cryptically before launching her sneak attack, only to pause in the middle of said attack to monologue about the meaning of life.  I mean, it’s so ridiculous how she’s using a knife when later we see what she can really do.  This is all just for building dramatic tension, and only barely touches reality when Asakura “realizes” that if she controls everything in this room she should have just frozen Kyon in place this whole time.  Why didn’t she just use that “final attack” from the start?

Haruhi observes we were still entertained.  Yeah… well… she might have gotten us to put on this daft-looking Twin Blades bunny suit but we know it was all a lark and we were even laughing a little at ourselves for finding it engrossing.  We’re a little silly at times, so what?  Ultimately we know what is coming because Haruhi has been pretty obvious about the fact that its a genre-swapping anime that follows the whims of its imaginative little protagonist.

Gear Third

Yeah, Haruhi, we caught all that too.  You think we wouldn’t notice that Suzumiya controls this show and that the explanation for what happens always involves her whims?  I mean, she says she wants something drastic to happen and on cue Asakura appears, making a big show of how she knows that’s a bad idea but then mysteriously agreeing that sometimes it’s nice if things get shaken up.

Therefore, we’re not surprised at all that a goddess in the room can “see” what Kyon is secretly doing on the computer.  Fool us once and shame on you, fool us twice and shame on us.  But try to fool us a third time?  Please; our Spirit Gun has at least three charges.  This attempt just makes Haruhi look bad.  When Koizumi shows up to say he has to get to work, us rewatchers and source readers wink to each other that we know what he really means.

Kaioken Times Four

You know, it’s about time that Haruhi started showing us a little respect.  We get it: Kyon is the audience and he’s dense.  Whenever he thinks something it’s Haruhi making fun of us, nevermind she seems to be eerily spot on whenever it’s not an obvious parody of how we’re easily distracted by Asahina’s sex appeal.  So what if he, and we, didn’t get the fact that Melancholy III was Haruhi’s attempt to go out on a date with him, and as a result can only point out the painfully obvious in retrospect.  It’s not our fault Haruhi is so difficult to understand; we’d really appreciate it if she just used the normal tropes, like being a quirky Japanese high school girl in a SoL comedy, to get her point across (...wait, wasn’t that the first thing she tried?).

In conclusion, we’ve shown that we’re more than a match for Haruhi and we’d appreciate it if she stopped trying to push us around all the time.  It took us a little while but we know better, and now that we do, nothing can really happen to us because she’s an anime and we’re real and the fourth wall will protect us.  There is not a single attack left that Haruhi can launch that will even slightly singe our superiority.

Asakura grins.  You think this knife is a toy?  You think what she’s wielding is some little prop like the one that was in Keiichi’s chest, a trick that we’ll be able to think our way through?  We’re wrong: this knife is so subtle it can cut through anything.  She smiles evilly and immobilizes us; we are completely within her power.  In fact, we are already dead.

???%

So we’ve gotten this far, have we?  We got Haruhi’s visual and verbal exposition, we got her references, we got her self-references, and we even got that sometimes she likes to try and manipulate our behavior in a crude fashion while commenting on it.  Well, that’s very impressive of us.  Now let’s see if we can follow this: a meta-discussion that takes place in front of us while Haruhi argues its points with itself using a set of characters who have manipulated the data all series long from the shadows now fighting it out openly using all the tropes we recognize and yet nonetheless will find that we believe only to come to the conclusion Haruhi wanted us to while not even noticing any of it was going on.  This is what happens when you enrage a goddess.  Ready?

Asakura is here to kill Kyon because if she doesn’t the plot can’t advance.  Can’t we see?  Haruhi has done so many strange things that if she tried to have a serious episode we wouldn’t believe it; we would just keep waiting for the situation to be the result of an elaborate setup or gag.  We’re just too sure that we’re smarter than her when in truth we’ve just been fooled by her act.  But if things keep going the way they are Suzumiya will never be taken seriously as a character; just maintaining the status quo will only result in Kyon’s opinion of her deteriorating so something has to be done (what, you thought Asakura was talking about the Japanese economy?).  Haruhi has tried everything, from comedy to mystery to sports to video games, and nothing has worked; she feels utterly defeated by our imperceptiveness.  But there is something left, one thing Asakura sees the show has not done which we would never expect: tragedy.

This is Haruhi’s ill-advised way out of this authorial and developmental cul-de-sac.  We saw Suzumiya’s real nature after an apparent murder, but that wasn’t enough to convince us then and certainly won’t be enough to convince us now.  What we need is a real, verifiable death of a beloved character, and once that happens we’ll get a veritable explosion of data on Suzumiya’s real personality that we will agree is no longer faked.  We’ll finally see her feelings are genuine and she’ll get her wish in the most horrible way possible, like a lonely girl dreaming of something drastic happening so she can strut her stuff like an ace detective without really thinking through the consequences.  Somebody has to watch out for her, and for Kyon, before Asakura can really hurt both of us with a tragic death of somebody we care about.

Enter Nagato.

What was she again?  Oh, that’s right, a digitally-animated emissary in the shape of a human created by the Director-Writers, the collective Data Integration Thought Entity who oversees this particular fictional world, to help the plot along and explain it to us when we begin to feel hopelessly lost.

“Ah, they really aren’t human.”

No, nobody is because it’s an anime.  Nagato has been trying to explain it to us the whole time… and still our immediate conclusion from her last-second appearance is the opposite of what it should be.  From the first scene in her apartment she has spoken nothing but the truth but due to our inability to comprehend somebody as complex as Haruhi we didn’t believe her.  

Nonetheless, she kept intervening on our behalf, watching over everything patiently and trying to aid our understanding because as she told us long ago, some of the writers knew this was coming.  Nagato was the primary agent, but we are just so predictably disappointing that they prepared Asakura to disrupt Haruhi as a backup plan just in case.  If only we could see through Nagato’s unusual mannerisms and notice that she was a living, breathing character too, and so know that as part of Haruhi we ought to try and understand that girl as well.  If you cut her she bleeds, but we have a way of only noticing when it is us that is hurt.

Now she has to face Asakura down in a battle of data: can Nagato find another way to convince us of the seriousness of Haruhi before the irreparable happens?  The action tropes begin.  Like always, she jumps in front of Kyon and protects him… but we still don’t take this seriously.  We’ve seen Nagato fight before, and this is just more of the same.  There needs to happen something that we haven’t seen before.  And on cue, she is impaled defending us, a gasp coming out that Haruhi would do something like this.  We’re given a full look at the damage: not a trick.  But still… not enough.  Too dramatic a moment, too theatrical, and Nagato shows she can just pull the spear out.  Whew.  We think it was just a scare… then Asakura mutilates Nagato with her final attack, surprising us when we thought it was safe and proving the point that we’ll only take this seriously if we see somebody is suffering.

Asakura is finished.

In the moment we think a character might die, we realize we regarded them as alive, and that we would actually be sad if they were gone.  We noticed and cared about her.  Nagato wins.  The classroom dissolves into the space she controlled before in Sign, and we realize this was always in her ballpark.  She had expended her offensive data beforehand to build a connection with us in small ways throughout the series so that when this moment came we would be ready, and she would at last break through Kyon’s lethargy in appreciating her value as a person.  Nagato has saved the show from being unable to make its point while not sacrificing its uniqueness or innocent vivacity, the crux of the issue for an unruly but utterly remarkable high school girl.  This is Haruhi's better half winning out: from this point on, we don't have be worried that she will hurt us no matter how many times we disappoint her.

In the meantime, though, she's still mad...

But where is the usual irate commentary on our behavior?  Nowhere.  Haruhi’s done mocking our thought processes for the moment; she’s had enough of that and we weren’t getting it anyway.  She’s going to change them.  She just has.  And she’s going to teach us something.  She’s going to trick us and teach us at the same time, and bend us to her will to prove that we are easy to manipulate using our expectations.  These last few episodes we’ve been so confident in our superiority, as though figuring out a few techniques and puzzles, while grossly overlooking our tacit buy-in to the conventions of each genre she has dabbled in, meant that we were smarter than her when in truth she intellectually towered over us.  That already inflamed her pride.  But when Suzumiya exposed her most tender feelings to us at the start of the episode and we had the audacity to treat them as a comedic trope, so much so that we broke her heart by still choosing Asahina despite all Haruhi had done for us, then it was time for the inescapable Amakakeru Ryū no Hirameki.  Haruhi can’t just hear Kyon’s thoughts, she can hear ours, and if we’re going to be that way then she’ll show us.  She’ll show us that not only can she do storytelling, reference, self-reference, and fourth-wall breaks, she can do them all at once and more in a dazzling self-self-self-referential fugue of theme, character, and plot that proves her total and awe-inspiring superiority.  When you try match wits with Haruhi she takes your weapons away (they were just pillows anyway), and we don’t even realize we’ve lost because she made up our mind before we even knew the argument began.

With this last flick of the blade to clean the blood off, we sympathetically notice that Nagato is collapsing in exhaustion from the fight and we rush to see if she is okay without wondering why we no longer suspect it might be a joke.  We were a thousand years too early to challenge Haruhi.

DESTROYED

Back to Pallet Town

So now the question is, did we get the point after this remarkable beatdown (this moment being a character in-universe acting out our thought processes, but in a way we find comedic because we totally know we didn’t just actually have something amazing happen to us)?  Well, we realized that however this world works, we do care more about the characters than the details.  That’s a start.  But how about getting easily distracted…

Nope, still failed that one.  We chuckle at the obviousness of Kyon’s dreaming once again in the hall, watching him go through our same thought process of whether this is a trick or not, and when future Asahina shows up with a blouse full to the brim we know it’s fanservice.  How blatant can you be?  Yet stare (you want me to link that image, don’t you?) or look away, it doesn’t matter; there’s no winning because either way Haruhi has us.  Ogling means we’re being controlled by it, being forced to avert our gaze means we’re being controlled by it too.  Either way our attention is in the same place, which is just where Haruhi wants it, and when the obvious innuendo slips out our minds go exactly where Haruhi wants them to.  We need a training arc badly.

The episode ends with Kyon observing that Suzumiya is back to her happy self as the girl out on the tennis court slaps the guy and we can practically hear “baka” from our couches and computer seats.  Sigh.  We got that Nagato should be paid attention to, but while Haruhi might have awed us she’ll still need to do a little something more, and though we’re an embarrassment to the S.O.S. Brigade she’ll keep dragging us along until that time comes.

---

Whew, like the series it took me a while but I figured out how to put into words what I’ve been trying to say, and I think I got (part of) it.  I hope you had as much fun reading this as I had writing it.  This is why I love Haruhi.